Winter Wonderland

Tidewater Virginia received an unexpected bout of snow this afternoon and early evening. I was off at day 2 of a regional conference up in Willamsburg and, as is my customary habit, checked the weather forecast online before I left the apartment this morning. Cloudy and cold iwth a chance of rain later in the day. Ho-hum. So it came as a great surprise when I came out of the conference room during a break and saw through the glass doors at the end of the hallway, a swirling flurry of white.

"Wazzat?" I said.

As the rate of snowfall was heavy and beginning to accumulate on the grass and parked cars, many of the conference attendees whose employers were too cheap to spring for hotel rooms and thus commuted each day, (myself included) gathered their belongings and rushed out into the wonderland of white, hoping to get home before the roads became a complete disaster. Two colleagues from the office expressed concerns about the whole thing, so I gave them my cell phone number to call in case they ran into any problems (e.g., sliding off the road and down some snowy embankment). I gave them about a ten mintue lead time before I left. If they ran into any problems, I would be along sooner or later to help and/or mock them. As far as I know, everyone got home safely.

Perhaps we were all over reacting as the greatest problem on the way home was much reduced visibility. But this is southeastern Virginia, after all, and it doesn't take much snow to send us into a panic.